Books › The passion
The passion
First published 1989 · 262 pages
A fever dream of frozen landscapes and labyrinthine canals where love is a gamble that costs you your heart.
What it feels like
Reading this book feels like wandering through a beautiful, disorienting fever dream. The narrative meanders between the freezing, blood-soaked snows of Napoleon’s Russian campaign and the watery, carnival-lit labyrinths of Venice, wrapping the reader in an atmosphere that is both starkly brutal and deeply magical. The prose is incantatory and aphoristic, demanding to be savored slowly as it circles the intoxicating, often destructive nature of desire. It is a deeply melancholic yet sensual experience, steeped in gender fluidity and mythic resonance. This is a story for those who love to lose themselves in lush, poetic sentences and surreal landscapes, where the boundaries between reality, fantasy, and the madness of love completely dissolve.
- Mood
- dreamlike
- surreal
- wintry
- carnival-esque
- haunting
- Tone
- lyrical
- philosophical
- melancholic
- mythic
- intimate
- Pace
- meandering
- Themes
- the fluidity of desire · the devastation of war · obsession and madness · gambling with the heart · storytelling and myth
- The writing
- Incantatory, poetic, and aphoristic, weaving magical realism into stark historical realities with mesmerizing rhythm.
- The arc
- A descent into the intoxicating, destructive depths of obsession, culminating in a bittersweet, solitary acceptance of love's madness.
- Who it's for
- Readers who crave lush, gender-bending magical realism and philosophical musings on love, preferring atmosphere over traditional plot.
Content notes
- war trauma
- animal death
- violence
- confinement
- mental illness
About the book
Jeanette Winterson’s novels have established her as one of the most important young writers in world literature. The Passion is perhaps her most highly acclaimed work, a modern classic that confirms her special claim on the novel. Set during the tumultuous years of the Napoleonic Wars, The Passion intertwines the destinies of two remarkable people: Henri, a simple French soldier, who follows Napoleon from glory to Russian ruin; and Villanelle, the red-haired, web-footed daughter of a Venetian boatman, whose husband has gambled away her heart. In Venice’s compound of carnival, chance, and darkness, the pair meet their singular destiny.
In her unique and mesmerizing voice, Winterson blends reality with fantasy, dream, and imagination to weave a hypnotic tale with stunning effects.
Description from Open Library.
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